Real Estate Disruptors

Home of the #100Millionaires Movement

Find Success Where Others Run Away

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Doing the work the way successful people work.

Doing what everyone else says you should do is easy. Focusing on that is tough.

Well, it’s not always easy, but it’s the easier way to work. If this is how people are successful, why be different?

There’s nothing wrong with doing what works. In fact, we teach other people how to wholesale the same way we sell precisely because it works. And it works extremely well, thank you very much! (shameless plug intended — visit Real Estate Disruptors to see what we offer). Focus on the right things, and success will follow.

Yet there is always something else out there. One of the fun and maddening aspects of real estate is the ever-changing nature of this business. Techniques that worked a couple of months ago may become ineffective due to a change in market conditions. That also means there are always new opportunities.

Most large, successful companies were not built on fantastic, completely new inventions. Apple built computers from existing components. Heinz developed ketchup based off of other sauces people were using to make rancid meat edible. Henry Ford didn’t invent the automobile or the assembly line, but he married the two to make affordable cars.

New opportunities present themselves all the time. The question is, should you take it? And if you do, what will you sacrifice to build the Next Big Thing? Where should your focus be?

A Perfect Example

Sandy Cesaire of the Bellaire Investment Group was on my podcast recently. She had made it big in real estate, lost it all in the crash ($800,000 CASH!), and rebuilt her life and her business. Sandy took her past experiences and found a new market — mobile homes with land. Most REIs won’t touch mobile homes, mainly because we don’t know what to do with them.

Now Sandy didn’t know much about mobile homes. She knew how to buy and sell properties though, and she took that knowledge and shifted it to this new market. Sandy had to learn about the peculiarities of mobile homes along the way, but she didn’t reinvent the wheel. She took what she had already been successful with and plugged her systems into a new market that other real estate investors were avoiding. Then she added a wrinkle:  instead of selling to other investors (who always want a low price), she sells directly to the general public. They save money, Sandy makes money, and everyone is happy.

Sandy expanded her business to other states and has plans to take it nationwide. All because she saw an opportunity and folded it into what she already knew worked. She stepped into an area others ran from and made it work. Sandy didn’t discover a new market — mobile homes are bought and sold every day — she applied her knowledge with a new twist to create a new opportunity.

Don’t Squirrel Around

People get into trouble when they get excited about something new and put all their energies into it. Classic Visionary problem — have a new idea and drop all your “boring” existing projects for the thrill of the new challenge.

The danger is that while you’re figuring out the bright shiny car, your old ones break down, and stop winning races for you. Pretty soon, you’re sitting in a Lamborghini but you don’t have any gas to put in it. And a garage full of supercars is useless if you can’t drive them.

Be careful of the shiny object, but don’t be afraid of it either. Remember, new doesn’t have to mean brand new, as in something completely different. It could be as simple as moving into a new market using your same systems.

Focus

Focus is key — Sandy admits in my podcast that she is constantly fighting to maintain her focus on the important things. It’s not that she doesn’t have big dreams or new ideas, but she knows if she chases them all, she won’t catch any.

Definitely dream and keep developing new ideas. After all, you don’t want to miss a golden opportunity, right? Then critically evaluate them, bounce them off other people, and let them simmer before adopting them. And don’t be afraid to put them on the back burner, or throw them out altogether. 

You also don’t want to see every idea as a sure-fire winner. Looking at your own ”brilliance” with a skeptical eye might be the most difficult skill to master. And yet it’s essential to your success. While the idea may seem unbeatable during conception, upon reflection it may have more flaws and holes than the Titanic.

Evaluation

So keep dreaming and coming up with the Next Big Thing. Then throw darts at it, have others poke holes in it, blast it with dynamite, search for all the ways it could blow up in your face. Ask yourself, “How does this fit into the rest of my business and my life?” Be real, and then take those answers, even the ones you don’t like, and make your decision.

Even following this advice, the new idea could flop. Or it could be wildly successful. You won’t know until you take it through the process. Hopefully this method can help you avoid the new ideas that should remain ideas only and not put into reality.

You may find that only one in 20 ideas have any real chance of success. Don’t be discouraged; you saved yourself from 19 bad ideas! Don’t let discarded ideas get you down. Give yourself the freedom to dream, the discipline to evaluate, and the honesty to listen to the results. 

So You Want to Own Many Businesses….

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Sounds like a great idea — start a bunch of businesses, hire people to do the work, and rake in the money. I might have to do that.

Only there’s a catch (of course there is):  you still have to run them, put out all the fires across multiple organizations, hire the right people, and not go insane in the process.

That’s actually a whole bunch of catches. You threw your net kinda wide and caught the motherload.

It Looks Simple, but…

That view from 30,000 feet looks pretty simple and serene. Running multiple businesses can exponentially increase the demands on your time. Not to mention the plethora of headaches when a problem in one business actually causes problems in the other ones. Nothing like one problem becoming five, right?

Obviously running multiple businesses can be done. After all, we have all seen people who manage it and make it look easy (at least in public): Elon Musk, Richard Branson, Warren Buffett, just to name a few. 

So how do they do it?

Organization

They have learned to organize their businesses. They have developed systems which they can plug into any business and get it running smoothly. They have systems and standards for evaluating talent and hiring people.

But first they learned how to organize. Delegate. Develop a method so they can offload the work that they don’t like or aren’t good at, specifically so they can spend time doing their genius work.

Organize. Some of us don’t like that word, or the structure it carries. Yet this is the key to growth; the key to expansion. It is the only way to remain sane when you start adding companies like pairs of shoes or cats. If you leave the shoes lying around everywhere, you’re going to trip all over them and ruin them. Same thing with cats.

How to Start

As the business owner, you have a vital purpose — that thing which you are really good at and which is most valuable to your company. Now in the beginning, you may have to do everything. That’s not a bad thing, because you need to know HOW to do everything. That’s necessary, because initially you will be the person who trains new hires. 

As you grow (and growth can occur fast), you must hire the right people who can do the job and who like doing the job. This is where systems come into play. Don’t just hire willy-nilly. Get a hiring procedure which does a proper evaluation of your applicants so you can weed out those who don’t fit your culture or have the work ethic/qualifications/abilities you want. You will save time in the hiring process, and you will have far fewer mis-hires that you have to fire later on.

Put other systems in place to handle other areas:  customer acquisition, marketing, HR, etc. And the more you can both automate and delegate these systems to other people, the more you can shed those work items that aren’t your vital purpose. 

Use Tried and True Systems

Don’t start from scratch trying to design your own system. You don’t have time for trial and error management. Find proven systems and install them. They may cost you some money up front, but they will save you many multiples of that amount down the road. Wasting time and hiring the wrong people are the most expensive mistakes you can make.

As you add businesses, you implement the same systems in each company. This way everything operates the same in each organization, and you don’t have to worry about it. Spend your time doing top-level activities and hire employees to run the other parts of your companies.

New business? Rinse, repeat. You may need some tweaks to the system depending on the specific requirements of that business (such as licensing, permitting, etc.), but the main form of the system should be the same.

This is where scalability comes in. Implementing repeatable systems creates time. You can’t scale up without time to do the work.

As your businesses grow, delegate more to other people. Then your time is spent on high value activities. And the more you can do that, the more you can grow.

So get organized NOW. Implement proven systems to your company, and you will be amazed at the time you save.

Need help? We have many programs to help you get organized, including exact systems to run your business. Check it out here. 

Brett Snodgrass & Brian Snider Share How Brett Was Able to Step Out of a 300 Deals a Year Business Without Skipping a Beat

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Brett Snodgrass & Brian Snider talk about how they got started in real estate, partnering up, finding their true purposes, and Brett eventually stepping out of the company and into the owner’s box.

Video Replay of Interview with Brett Snodgrass & Brian Snider

Buy our Perfect Seller Appointment Checklist. https://www.disruptors.com/checklist

Want to close more deals without spending any more money? Go to https://www.disruptors.com

Follow me on IG: https://www.instagram.com/steve.trang

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SHOW NOTES

Brett & Brian Share How Brett Stepped Out of a 300 Deals a Year Business Without Skipping a Beat

With Brett Snodgrass and Brian Snider, Simple Wholesaling

November 4, 2020

About Brett Snodgrass and Brian Snider

Brett Snodgrass is a former college basketball player and teacher who started wholesaling houses in 2007 by buying houses off eBay in Ohio. The only odd thing was that Brett lived in Indianapolis, IN. He eventually decided to move the business to Indianapolis permanently, founding Simple Wholesaling and leaving the Ohio markets. Brett is a big proponent of education and constantly improving yourself and your team. 

Brett continued to build his business, eventually hiring his friend Brian Snider three years ago to help him run the business. This partnership has allowed Brett to concentrate on his passion, education and content creation.

Brian Snider was a teacher for 14 years and on a career path to become a principal when he decided he did not want to run a school. He joined Brett about three years ago and the two worked together to build Simple Wholesaling. He moved up rapidly through various positions to the Integrator/COO position. 

Today Brett has moved out of daily operations altogether and into the Owner’s Box, still involved with the business but in a new oversight role, content creator with their podcasts (The Real Estate Investing with a Purpose podcast and the local market The Indy Investor Pod). 

Brian has stepped into the Visionary/CEO position and is continuing to grow and expand Simple Wholesaling, adding services and expanding their real estate investor education programs.

Connect with or find more information about Brett and Brian at www.simplewholesaling.com, [email protected], or [email protected].

Show Notes

Brett and Brian join Steve to explain how they expanded Brett’s company, the systems and organization Brian helped install, and how Brett has now stepped away from the company and fully into the Owner’s Box with Brian taking the reins and continuing their expansion. It’s a different story than many because it shows you can take a different path to your business.

Top 5 Takeaways from Brett and Brian:

5.  Definitely use a hiring system to screen applicants. Not having a system will result in you continuously hiring the wrong people for the wrong seats.

4. Don’t wait to hire more people. If you delay until your pipeline is full, you won’t have time to train new hires. Get people onboard while you have time to educate and train them.

3. Get educated. Masterminds, sales training (especially Steve’s training), learning and implementing good systems will all make your life much easier and your business much less hectic and more profitable.

2. Give back. Sharing your experience and knowledge may seem counterintuitive because you feel like you’re training your competition, but in fact you can build your business and contacts by helping others. In addition, you will be known as the go-to person for advice and help, which can have deals and opportunities come your way which otherwise might not.

1. Your roles in the business can (and probably will) change over time. That’s OK! If you tire of doing the work, you can bring on other good people who can have the excitement and energy to run the daily operations while you transition to an owner oversight role.

Bonus Takeaway: Decide to take action and commit to doing it with purpose. Scaling up your business can be done with a good hiring process, and scaling up can exponentially grow your business. If you train your people and yourself, you can build the business and eventually step out of the daily operations while giving others the opportunity to achieve their own goals within the business.

About Steve Trang

Steve Trang is the founder of the Real Estate Disruptors movement and host of the Real Estate Disruptors Podcast. He started his podcast in the middle of 2018 to inspire wholesalers and real estate agents to double their incomes by adding a second leg to their business. The podcast has now grown to ten thousand followers with new members of the community sharing their success story every week.

Steve’s goal is to create 100 Millionaires. One of his favorite quotes is from the great Zig Ziglar: “You can have everything in life you want, if you will just help enough other people get what they want.” He heard this quote when he first got into real estate, and it has stuck with him throughout his entire career. In fact, it’s essentially one of the core values Steve lives by.

Connect with Steve at linkedin.com/in/stevetrang, facebook.com/stevetrang, instagram.com/steve.trang, stevetrang.com, or realestatedisruptors.com.

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Why You Need to Network

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November 3, 2020

You need to network with your peers. This is VITAL to your success.

Why do I want to network with my competitors?

Why would I share my tips and tricks with them?

What’s in it for me?

Money. Time. Fewer headaches and emergencies. More closed deals. Better leads. Hot tips. Resources. 

But the biggest thing is help. You can get help when you need it, from people who care.

Most people start their business basically on their own. You may have a partner (or a spouse along for the roller coaster ride!), but you don’t have much of a support system, if any. And like most solopreneurs, you slug it out alone, battling all the forces stacked against your success.

You don’t have to.

Networking Benefits

Networking with people in your business is more than just finding like-minded crazy dudes and dudettes willing to swap war stories and have a coffee. Done properly, networking opens all kinds of doors for you and your fellow entrepreneurs:

  • Share resources, like skip tracers, lead sources, organizational systems, software/app choices, others associated with real estate (non-investor professionals), and more;
  • Gain insight, tips and tricks from those who have been in your shoes;
  • Learn how to avoid expensive mistakes before you make them;
  • Find partners for deals, investors to sell to, good contractors;
  • Gain educational opportunities to help you organize and expand your business;
  • Find some deals you may not have found otherwise;
  • And the list goes on and on and on….

Help is the Key

In order for networking to work; however, you MUST approach it from the standpoint of “How can I help?” The group isn’t there to just give everything to you; this needs to be a symbiotic relationship. If you withhold information from someone that could have helped them, you aren’t participating in the group. You’re leeching off of it, and pretty soon you’re going to burn all the bridges you may have built and damaged your reputation in the process.

I have had some of the biggest “Ah Ha!” moments of my career directly from my networking and mastermind groups. It’s possible I might have come across some of these ideas/systems/helpful tips on my own, but I absolutely would never have figured out half of them without my friends in these groups. And certainly it would have taken me much, much longer.

We see it all the time — someone who is highly motivated, is actively doing deals, but is struggling. They’re wondering if they made the right choice; not because they think the business is not there, but because they don’t know what they’re doing wrong. Remember when you were in that position? Or maybe you’re there now, debating whether to throw in the towel and get a “real job?”

You’re in the right place. The opportunity is right in front of you. You simply need some help, some guidance, people whom you can develop a relationship with who are excited and willing to provide assistance. 

Work It

Most of all, don’t be afraid to ask. This is the most expensive mistake you can make. Most of us in this industry are more than happy to talk about ourselves, our successes, and especially we like to one-up each other for the biggest screw-ups (yes, it’s a sickness, we know!). There is a sort of weird bragging rights here, but at the same time, we don’t like to see someone else go through the pain we did.

So get involved. Join a group, or three. Participate. I can’t stress that enough — you have to be engaged and involved in the group. At first, you may be mostly on the receiving end of help and advice. But soon you will know more, and you will see someone else who is in a situation you already experienced, and then it’s your turn to earn bragging rights (even the apocalyptic kind). This is where you pay it forward. This is where you provide value.

And beyond all that, you can make some good friends, cohorts, compadres. We humans like to belong to groups with similar interests, and doing so helps you feel less alone in the world, especially when times get tough. 

In real estate, you can always count on someone else to have a story that begins with, “Oh yeah, well I can top that…” 

And sometimes that’s exactly what you need to hear.

Dan Brault Shares How He Went From Giving Up With 350,000+ in Personal Debt to Paying All His Debt Off in 12 Months

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Dan Brault talks about what got him into real estate, how excessive optimism led him into catastrophes with massive debt, and how he ended up paying back all of his personal debt in just one year.

Buy our Perfect Seller Appointment Checklist. https://www.disruptors.com/checklist

Want to close more deals without spending any more money? Go to https://www.disruptors.com

Follow me on IG: https://www.instagram.com/steve.trang

Video Replay of Interview with Dan Brault

Start Your Real Estate Disruptors Journey by visiting http://www.realestatedisruptors.com

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How Dan Brault Went From 350,000+ in Debt in 2019 To Paying Off All Debts In Less Than a Year

With Dan Brault, House Buyers Club

Oct. 28, 2020

About Dan Brault

Dan Brault is the owner of House Buyers Club in Rochester, New York. He was a successful medical device salesman who gave up a six figure job to become wildly successful at real estate. Now, in addition to owning an expanding real estate wholesaling business, he is a member of the Front Row Dads group, which helps business owners balance their family-work balance.

Connect with or find more information about Dan at instagram.com/ActionDanBro, facebook.com/housebuyersclubllc , or instagram.com/HouseBuyersClub 

Show Notes

Steve and Dan discuss how Dan took his business from being $350,000 in personal debt to paying his parents back, quitting his six figure job, and booming his real estate business. Dan is brutally honest about his struggles and what he did to fix the problems he was experiencing.

Top 5 Takeaways from Dan Brault:

5.  You are going to fail in this business. Expect it and don’t let it knock you out. 

4. You can start your real estate business while you work another job. It can help you have money saved up or produced for the times when you aren’t making money (or you’re losing money) in your real estate business.

3. Find out what you do well and what you like to do. Then hire people who can do the things you aren’t good at or don’t like to do. Get trained in and use predictive indexing — it is worth the investment and will save you many times the cost by helping you to avoid hiring the wrong people.

2. Systems, systems, systems. You won’t make it without putting in place good systems. You don’t have to develop them yourself; there are many ready to use systems available.

1. You can make the big money and create the lifestyle you want in real estate, or in any other business. To do so, you have to work at it constantly by self-improvement, by trying to get better every day, and by taking action. All the education in the world is useless if you don’t, at some point, put the knowledge into action.

Bonus Takeaway:  Steve’s training transformed my business. Now about 95% of what I do was learned directly from Steve’s program, and it has made my business boom and also enjoyable. I would never have had this level of success without taking Steve’s program. Get trained so you can be successful.

About Steve Trang

Steve Trang is the founder of the Real Estate Disruptors movement and host of the Real Estate Disruptors Podcast. He started his podcast in the middle of 2018 to inspire wholesalers and real estate agents to double their incomes by adding a second leg to their business. The podcast has now grown to ten thousand followers with new members of the community sharing their success story every week.

Steve’s goal is to create 100 Millionaires. One of his favorite quotes is from the great Zig Ziglar: “You can have everything in life you want, if you will just help enough other people get what they want.” He heard this quote when he first got into real estate, and it has stuck with him throughout his entire career. In fact, it’s essentially one of the core values Steve lives by.

Connect with Steve at linkedin.com/in/stevetrang, facebook.com/stevetrang, instagram.com/steve.trang, stevetrang.com, or realestatedisruptors.com.

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